My Lords, I will speak particularly to Amendment 271 but I broadly support most of the amendments in this group, which are all about maintaining standards. There has been quite a lot of repetition. I am afraid I will also be guilty of that to some extent, although I will try to be brief, and there will be repetition in the future as the debate continues. I add my thanks to those of other noble Lords to the Ministers —the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield—who have maintained great courtesy throughout and have given us detailed answers to our many questions in Committee.
In negotiating a free trade agreement, the Government have repeatedly stated, as has been said, that they will not compromise on our high environmental protection, animal welfare and food standards. But Ministers and Governments come and go, and as long as there is no statutory commitment to this goal, there is bound to be uncertainty. The commitment to create a Trade and Agriculture Commission is a step in the right direction but as currently proposed it is advisory and ephemeral.
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The arguments for high standards are widely agreed but we need to ensure that these can be maintained in a global trading environment; that our farming industry is not unfairly undermined by creating an unlevel competitive playing field; and that we can help improve international standards by levelling them up, as was referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Curry and Lord Cameron. It would be folly to kill off our own industry, which safeguards our food security while maintaining high standards, and to essentially export poor welfare and poor environmental standards.
It has been said several times that this is protectionism about a US trade deal. I am concerned about much more than the US. This is about numerous trade deals in many countries in the years to come. It is about far more than chlorinated chicken or hormone-treated beef, although I will return to those in a moment. We should be concerned about, among other things, animal housing and husbandry standards, welfare at slaughter, transport, and antibiotic use and misuse—which, apart from animal welfare implications, have huge public health consequences. We should also be asking questions about what amount of environmental degradation has been involved to produce certain foods.
The Government may argue that there are legal or WTO limits on what can be done but it seems to me that there are some inconsistencies in this argument, and I would be grateful for answers to the following questions. Let us take the issue of hormone-treated beef: personally, I am content to eat it; indeed, I and anyone who has been to the USA will almost certainly have eaten it. There is data suggesting that 90% of all the beef in the US has been so treated. But I accept that many people will not want to eat it and I do not disagree with that ban. I am also aware that WTO rules do not allow methods of production to be a means of limiting importation of food products that satisfy sanitary and phytosanitary regulations. So how
is it possible, for example, to ban the import of hormone-treated beef and yet not define standards for the use and misuse of antibiotics, which have arguably much greater animal welfare and public health implications? Why can we not ban beef from cattle reared on cleared rainforest, which has far more serious environmental consequences than hormone-treated beef does?
Another argument that will be deployed against this amendment is that it ties the hands of our negotiators. I am not persuaded by that argument. Are not their hands strengthened by having a clear mandate, with red lines enshrined in our legislation, consistent with the Government’s own manifesto? After all, we have already partly tied the USA’s hands with chickens and beef, have we not?
In conclusion, I am content with the current stance on chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-treated beef, but our ability to maintain that ban raises questions as to why we cannot go even further. I would very much appreciate an answer to these apparent inconsistencies in order to understand and accept the rejection of this amendment.